Closing speech for the defence, report of day twenty three

Day Twenty three of Closing Speech for the defence

Monday, 25th Nov 96 - Day 305 of the Trial

Mr Morris began with some points about himself and some general comments before Ms Steel continued with the detailed evidence. He said that there was no case to answer on publication of the London Greenpeace factsheet complained of since there was not one shred of evidence showing that he had published the factsheet himself directly, or indeed any evidence establishing the that he was indirectly responsible for the publishing of the factsheet to a member of the public. He claimed that McDonald's must be able to show direct publication and that even if showing indirect responsibilty for publication was considered sufficient, then they would still have to show a causal path between him and the publication of the factsheet.

Mr Morris asked the court to consider that despite having seven spies infiltrating London Greenpeace over a period of 18 months - agents whose brief was to establish who was responsible for the factsheet and the anti-McDonald's campaigns - "it is absolutely remarkable that not one piece of evidence has been uncovered or established to show my causal responsibility directly or indirectly for the words complained of."

He said that the whole drift of the witnesses on this subject even is that he was not involved in the anti-McDonald's campaign. In fact, the general drift was that he was not even by their standard, effectively involved in London Greenpeace.

Mr Morris concluded:

"..there is only one reason why they could possibly have failed to come up with any evidence of causal responsibility or that I was an active party to publication, despite all their extensive efforts, it is not because they actually failed to find out my involvement or whatever, it is obviously because I was not involved in publication directly or indirectly of the London Greenpeace factsheet."

Mr Morris moved on to the subject of the so-called admissions he had allegedly made. The admissions he was talking about were the 'Haringey affidavit' and the claims of Allan Clare. He said that extreme caution sould be taken when considering these admissions as the only evidence against him in the light of 18 months of infiltration, and yet no direct evidence. The weight of evidence from both defence and plaintiff witnesses indicated that Mr Morris was effectively not involved in London Greenpeace, and not at all involved in the anti-McDonald's campaign.

He said that if any weight at all were to be given to the evidence of Mr Clare, one would have to have 100 per cent faith in the witness to take an admission against the weight of the rest of the evidence at all seriously. He said that he would show how Allan Clare was completely unreliable and that his evidence could not be trusted. He pointed out that at the meeting where this admission was allegedly made, one of the other McDonald's spies was present and yet failed to notice any such admission. Ms Steel would later draw attention to the notes by Mr Clare that talked of her attendence at a meeting on a date on which she had proved she was in the Outer Hebrides.

Mr Morris moved onto the 'Haringey affidavit'. This had been prepared on his behalf by a solicitor representing him on a separate case. Mr Rampton interupted and said that Mr Morris was not giving evidence. Mr Morris pointed out that he had signed and sworn an affidavit to the effect of what he was about to say but Justice Bell insisted that his counter affidavit had not been entered as evidence.

Mr Morris was shocked. He had obviously been relying on this counter affidavit.

"At the moment I have been considering, and I would like to at least reserve that position, that the affidavit which I swore to counter that and the letter from the solicitor about the circumstances are part of the evidence in this case. I do not believe that the Plaintiffs challenged them at any stage, and therefore I would consider that admissible documents."

Justice Bell would not be swayed. Mr Morris moved on, without recourse to his counter affidavit. He pointed out the the paragraph referred to in Haringey Affidavit was not a piece of evidence in terms of the case involved, and that the 28 words were a summary of the entire McLibel case, written by a solicitor. He said that the wording was clearly not his own and quoted a part which read "this arose from leaflets we had produced concerning interalia" which he said was not a phrase he would use.

Mr Morris finished by saying that in the event his counter affidavit was not considered as evidence, the whole Haringey statement was about the pressure that their were under in McLibel case and that he would not have the time available to prepare for another case in Haringey. He said that the pressure that he was under was the reason he could not involve himself in another case and obviously reflected on his ability to write, check and monitor, what his solicitor was doing in the Haringey case.

Mr Morris then added that the Haringey Affidavit purports to say "this arose from leaflets we had produced" and yet McDonald's had already dropped their case against Ms. Steel on alleged production, having accepted that it was impossible for her to have been involved at that time. Therefore they were accepting that the affidavit was innaccurate.

Mr Morris also attempted to refer to the letter from his solicitor in which she explained the situation regarding the Haringey Affidavite and how Mr Morris had instructed her to change the wording but she had refused because that part was irrelevent to the Harringey case and she could not justify legal aid for such a change. Justice Bell said that the letter had not been called as evidence. Mr Morris said that it should be considered admissible under the Civil Evidence Act notice but Justice Bell persisted and said that it was too late.

Mr Morris pointed out that the paragraph containing the so-called admission was nothing more than a colloquial summary produced by the solicitor. It was not required to be evidence in the case, and therefore careful wording had not been considered important by the solicitor. He said that this was the same mistake that Lord Justice Neill had made in his ruling at the Court of Appeal in March 1994. Mr Morris said he had also referred to other similar mistakes made in other rulings about the so-called publication by the Defendants, and it was a regular mistake (ommiting the word 'alleged') made in virtually every media report mentioning the McLibel trial. He said that each was potentially contempt of court, if the judge might be persuaded by what he read outside the court.

"..we do not think you should be swayed by what you read in the media. We do not think you should be swayed by what you have read in the judgment of Lord Justice Neill, about this case. And we do not think you should be swayed by something in this affidavit in a colloquial mis-summary by the solicitor."

Mr Morris finished by saying that if they had gone to the House of Lords to appeal against Lord Justice Neill's judgment on that particular matter, it would have been thrown out as trivial, and an abuse of process it was not relevant to his judgment. Justice Bell agreed and Mr Morris replied, "Exactly and that is the same point that I am making about this affidavit. It is a sentence that is not relevant to the decision that the judge had to make in the Haringey case and therefore we consider it as a trivial matter which is no basis for any kind of evidence."

Mr Morris moved on to some general points about the factsheet. He reminded the court how they had heard from Mr Gravett, who was involved at that time, that the factsheet had been printed in 1986 and 1987 and distributed at the time. Mr Morris suggested that the bulk of the distribution of that factsheet must have occurred before the limitation period and therefore, any occurences of the words complained of since the limitation period started, may just as equally in fact be as a result of that original distribution.

"The burden of proof is on the Plaintiffs to show that any publication within the relevant times must have been as a result of something that me or Helen has done. Not as a result of something that happened before September 1987 or indeed afterwards by anyone else."

He concluded that the only printing of the factsheet and the most extensive publication of the factsheet if any publication, attributed to London Greenpeace, took place before September 87 (the start of the limitation period). He said that the bulk of any publication after that time would have been as a result of the Veggies Ltd. distributing the factsheet (indeed they continue to distribute their own version of that orginal factsheet).

Mr Morris moved on to the evidence of his involvement in London Greenpeace. Between 1987 and 1989, the only evidence came from defence witnesses. There was no evidence during this period that Mr Morris was involved in the anti-McDonald's activities of London Greenpeace and the evidence also indicated that his involvement in the group in general was tailing off.

He also pointed out that there was not one shred of evidence of his involvement in anti-McDonald's campaign activities, up to the service of the writ, even during the period when McDonald's had seven infiltrators with London Greenpeace.

Mr Morris then spoke of the references dotted throughout the Plaintiffs' evidence of about availability of Anti-McDonald's leaflets. He said that as the court had learnt, the term 'anti-McDonald's' leaflets could mean almost anything: it could mean the Veggies Ltd. leaflet of which there were long and short versions, there was the London Greenpeace factsheet complained of, and there were a variety of A5 versions, and indeed other leaflets of a similar nature. Mr Morris reminded Justice Bell of how, the previous Friday, Mr Rampton presented one that he purported to be the London Greenpeace A5 leaflet, and yet was infact from a different group. Justice Bell confirmed this, saying that the one Mr Rampton had handed him was infact from a Manchester animal rights group.

Mr Morris said:

"..even in this court, after a number of years, there is still confusion even now over who is referring to which leaflet produced by who, what size is it, is it the same as this, what is the text. And therefore, when the agents of McDonald's have referred to anti-McDonald's leaflets, unless they have been able to specifically identify and retain a copy of the London Greenpeace factsheet, then we cannot assume or even infer that it is the London Greenpeace factsheet complained of. It would be unsafe to infer that is the factsheet complained of."

Ms Steel began by making some general points about the evidence given by McDonald's 'inquiry agents' or spies. Mr Pocklington, Mr. Bishop and Mr. Clare had all said that they had been given descriptions or photographs of Mr Morris and Ms Steel to look out for at the meetings. She said that this should be borne in mind because the fact that they were specificaly looking out for the defendants made it even more noteworthy that the spies had provided no reliable evidence that the defendants had encouraged others to distributes the factsheet or had distributed it themselves.

Ms Steel said that the only evidence of any kind connecting the defendants to the factsheet was that of Mr Clare who claimed that Ms Steel had admitted to him that she had produced all the anti-McDonald's leaflets. She pointed out that this was impossible and that the Plaintiffs have already accepted it is not true, and she suggested that it might be that he had decided to make all these so-called admissions because he was told that she was one of the people to look out for.

Ms Steel then referred to the fact that she was a signatory of the London Greenpeace building society account. She said that being a signatory did not make her a 'leader' of the group or responsible for the actions of others involved in the group and that it was irrelevent to the case. She also pointed out that Mr Bishop had reported that it had been stated at one meeting that the signatories to the account were Ms Steel and Mr Morris, which had been shown to be incorrect as Mr Morris was not. She said this demonstrated the danger of relying heavily on what the spies claimed was said at meetings.

Ms Steel then commented on McDonald's attempts to show the Ms Steel and Mr Morris as leading figures in London Greenpeace.

"what has that got to do with the subject of the action, the factsheet? Basically the Plaintiffs are trying to create a smoke screen to portray us as being the leaders or the most vociferous etc., in order to say that we are responsible. But, this is the point I am coming back to, even if we were elected presidents of the group, McDonald's would still have to show specific acts relating to the factsheet which showed our assent. And the fact of the matter is that obviously we were not elected presidents and there were no positions of authority within the group."

Ms Steel referred to a previous libel case in which the defendant who was the Secretary General of the Seychellois National Movement, and despite that being his position, the claim against him had been struck out because there was no evidence that he was in any way responsible for the actual publication of the defamatory words published in the SNM journal.

"We would say that must apply to us even more so because we are not in any position of authority, and just on the matter of being a signatory to the bank account, it does not make you in any way have any authority over anybody else. It certainty did not in London Greenpeace because there were not any positions of authority."

She continued:

"So I really do not see how the Plaintiffs can argue that either by being a signatory to the account or just by generally being involved with London Greenpeace, to any extent, we are therefore responsible for the publication of the fact sheet. There must be evidence of some specific act of assent or distribution directly related to us."

Ms Steel referred to the judgment of Lord Justice Parker in the Seychellois case. He said that, "the fact that the defendant is the member of the same organisation as those who published or authorised the printing of the libel can make no difference for the tort is not committed by the organisation, it is committed by individuals."

[Adjournment for lunch]

Ms Steel made the point that there had been various assertions made by the McDonald's spies which generally appeared in their statements but not in their notes made at the time, that Mr Morris and Ms Steel were particularly vociferous or opinionated. She said that even if that were true, it would be completely irrelevant. She also said that if true, it would actually work against McDonald's because if the defendants were so opinionateed and involved in the anti-McDonald's campaign, then after eighteen months of infiltration of the London Greenpeace meetings, McDonald's should have dozens of examples them calling for pickets of McDonald's, and encouraging distribution of the fact sheet.

"Instead, what have they got? Not a single occasion when either of us spoke in favour of pickets or in favour of the factsheet. Obviously that does not mean we were against it, but the point is that if we were the motivating forces... and we were so opinionated, as the Plaintiffs make out, then how come they have not got any examples of us encouraging pickets and distribution of the fact sheet?"

Ms Steel referred to some of the evidence from Mr Pocklingtons' statement. He told us how he had claimed that copies of the leaflets complained of were stocked in boxes available to take away, yet in his notes made at the time, he does not mention them at all. He had also claimed in his third statement that anti-McDonald's leaflets were always available at Endsleigh Street meetings of London Greenpeace, but that was the first time he had ever mentioned it, it was not in his first statement and it was not in the notes he had made at the time. He didn't specify which leaflet was available and this third statement had been made 6 years after the event!

Ms Steel continued on Mr Pocklingtons evidence. He had said that during the course of the meeting of 16th November 1989 it had become clear to him that the defendants were core members of the group and major participants in its activities. Ms Steel noted that there was no mention of that in his notes of the meeting, and in fact in his notes of this meeting he does not actually say anything about Ms Steel other than the fact that she was there and that she lived in Haringey. She also pointed out that Mr Morris was not even at that meeting, and she questioned how Mr Pocklington could have got the impression from that and other meetings that they were both core members and major participants.

"I think it is clear that Mr. Pocklington was asked specific questions about us when his statement was being prepared and therefore these were prompted answers rather than something which he came up with himself."

She said that this was demonstrated by the notes he had taken regarding the 1st March 1990:

".. he refers to the fact that myself, Jane and Dave Morris and Alan from Catford were at the meeting and he says, due to the lack of numbers and lack of 'essential people' at the meetings, little was discussed of any import. So that would clearly contradict the assertion made in his statement that we were the core members or core members. And seeing as that was his notes made at the time, that is far more likely to be accurate [the note on the 1st March 1990] that we obviously were not 'essential' people or that not all the essential people were there."

At another point in his statement, he referred to Ms Steel participating in a discussion about the anti-McDonald's fayre. However there was no reference in his notes about her having made any contribution to the discussion. Ms Steel said that for the assertion to be added to his statement 3 and a half years after the event must be pure speculation, and in any event, he had not said in his statement what her contribution had been. When asked, he could not recall whether or not she spoke against the fayre and he could not say what he was relying on when he put in his statement that she had participated in the discussion.

Ms Steel concluded:

"..in the whole of Mr. Pocklington's evidence, despite the fact that he attended at least 26 meetings or events of London Greenpeace over the course of I think about nine months, there is not a single mention anywhere of me agreeing to any use of the factsheet or stating that I distributed it. Or of me encouraging other people to use it."

Ms Steel went on to the evidence of Mr Bishop. In his first statement he had talked about a meeting comencing with Mr Morris and Ms Steel commenting on letters received since the preceding meeting, but Ms Steel pointed out that Mr Bishop's notes made no mention to that effect. She noted that what he had not considered important enough to note at the time was hardly likely to be memorable over three years later.

Ms Steel continued with Mr Bishops evidence:

"Relating to the same meeting, in paragraph 7 of the first statement, he referred to Charlie and Jane reading out a list of stalls invited to the fayre. He said in that same paragraph that Mr. Morris, myself and Mr. Gravett were the most vociferous in objecting to, or agreeing to which stalls should be invited, as we were the 'lead persons'. Lead persons is clearly an opinion. It is not a statement of fact, and in his notes there is no record of me saying anything at all at that meeting. So how he can say 3 and a half years later that I was the most vociferous, it just defies belief really.
Again, I would say that all of these things about where we are supposed to be the most vociferous and the leaders and things like that, has all been prompted when the statement was being made. He is being asked 'what about Helen', 'what about Dave', because we are the only two people left in the case. So, that is who the focus is on. There is a real danger that when people are being focused on like that, the facts get distorted.

But also on that point even if it had been true, that we were the most vociferous, in objecting or agreeing, which I do not accept, what has it got to do with whether or not myself or Mr. Morris assented to publication of the factsheet. It has absolutely nothing to do with it at all."

Ms Steel presented further examples of assertions in Mr Bishops statements for which no basis could be found in his own notes. She then referred to the occasion it was found that a copy of the factsheet was attached to Mr Bishops statement and yet it turned out during his evidence that he had obtained a copy of the A5 leaflet, not the factsheet.

"I am making the point that people throughout their statements in this case have referred to the "What's wrong with McDonald's?" leaflets and have then signed to say 'yes it is true that this was the leaflet that I picked up that is appended at appendix 1 or 2' or something like that. They do not actually think back 'is this the right leaflet?', they just assume, 'well it is called "What's Wrong With McDonald's?", it must be the right leaflet' even though there are several different versions all with the same title.

They are not necessarily aware of that or thinking about that, so they just sign to say 'yes that is correct' without thinking about it and that is why as Mr. Morris said this morning, it is particularly important that the Plaintiffs show continuity of exhibits of factsheets - that they have got somebody being able to say 'I picked up this copy of the factsheet on this date and here it is, I put my initials on it' or something, 'and I handed it to the solicitor and I can identify that this is the exactly the right copy'. Because otherwise, when you just work on the fact that the title of the leaflet is What's Wrong With McDonald's and it has a cartoon on it, it is impossible to distinguish on that basis between the short or the long versions and between the versions produced by Veggies and any other number of groups around the country."

Mr Morris added:

"I think that is a very good, and Helen has put it perfectly. Its really an example of what we were saying and we have to ask - I am not saying this is deliberate - but why did the solicitors put the wrong leaflet appended to Mr. Bishop's statement? I am not saying it is deliberate or whatever, but it shows there has to be an an original copy in court and a pathway between that document and, you know, the original event."

Ms Steel covered other assertions made by Mr. Bishop which had since been shown to be incorrect. She then summed up the evidence put forward by Mr Bishop:

"..despite being asked to focus on myself and Mr Morris, there is no mention anywhere in his evidence of me agreeing to any use of the factsheet or to me stating that I distributed the factsheet or that I was going to distribute the factsheet, or to encouraging anybody to use the factsheet. Nor is there any even any evidence of any comment or role in the anti-McDonald's campaign in general on my part. Mr Bishop attended I think it was at least 12 meetings of London Greenpeace where he was trying to keep an eye out for things that connected me to the anti-McDonald's campaign and yet he did not come up with anything."

There was a short adjournment before Ms Steel moved on to the evidence of Mr Clare. In his first statement in the part relating to a meeting on the 18th January 1990, he had stated that Ms Steel took control of the meeting and organised the agenda. Ms Steel pointed out that even if true, there was no relevence. Ms Steel said that it was a 'red herring' and asked "Where is there any evidence of any decision relating to distribution of the factsheet?". She noted that under cross-examination, Mr Clare had said that what he meant by somebody taking control was simply that they announced the next item to be discussed or that they said something like let us move on. When he had been asked whether there was any significance in who took the minutes, he had replied that it was just thrown open to volunteers.

Mr Clare had also claimed that Ms Steel had addmited to him that she had assisted with production and distribution of anti-McDonald's leaflets, but Ms Steel pointed out that he did not say in the statememt which anti-McDonald's leaflets he was referring to. She also pointed out that his notes made at the time claim that she had admitted assisting with production and distribution of all anti-McDonald's leaflets.

Ms Steel added:

"Obviously that was just completely ridiculous, I did not say that or anything like it. It is particularly ridiculous thing to suggest that I would have said, bearing in mind the number of leaflets produced around the world about McDonald's. And really it just goes to show how unreliable the notes of Mr Clare are. And obviously the main point on this is that in any event it is completely untrue. There is my own evidence, there is the evidence of Mr Gravett and the evidence of Ms Laporte, and indeed the acceptance by McDonald's that I was not responsible for production of the factsheet."

Now referring to Mr Clares second statement, Ms Steel spoke of Mr Clares account of an invitation to London Greenpeace by the BBC for somebody to have a debate on World Service radio with McDonald's, and the fact that McDonald's representatives had refused to appear on the programme. Mr Clare had said that the group treated it as a great moral victory, but also claimed that certain members of the group thought that McDonald's refusal was lucky, effectively because people in the group admitted to not having any sources to back up most of the points in the leaflet. Ms Steel pointed out that Mr Clare did not say who these members of the group were, and that Mr Gravett was quite happy to do the debate on the World Service radio.

"..so it can hardly have been his view that there were not any sources to back up the points in the leaflet. Unless he wanted to go on the radio and make a complete idiot of himself which I am sure he would hardly set out to do. Secondly, this ridiculous allegation by Mr Clare is contradicted by all the other evidence from Mr Gravett, myself and Ms Laporte who were at the meeting and who never heard any such thing said, and also Mr Pocklington who was at this meeting as a spy for McDonald's and his notes of this meeting... do not mention this incident, or well it mentions the World Service interview but it does not mention any such admission that there were no sources for the information in the leaflets.

You would have thought since he was there to find out precisely that sort of information he would have made a note of it if it had been said... Mr Pocklington confirmed what he had written... We asked him that if he had heard anyone at a meeting saying that they did not have any information to back up what was in the leaflets, that he would have made a note of that and he said he presumed he would have done, yes. He summed up everything in his notes that he thought was relevant which was that Mr Gravett was willing to take part in the BBC World Service interview whereas McDonald's were not."

Ms Steel gave a few more examples to illustrate the nature of Mr Clare's evidence before concluding:

"Our view is that absolutely no weight should be attached to his evidence. He attended at least 19 meetings of London Greenpeace, and we believe more because there were lots of pages of his notebook which were blanked out by the Plaintiffs which indicate that there were other meetings that he attended.
He took numerous letters belonging to London Greenpeace which had been sent to the group by members of the public. Letters which did not belong to him and he took them in order to provide copies for McDonald's files. And he broke into the offices of London Greenpeace and generally he was a completely unreliable and untrustworthy character.
We would say that the fact that he made a statement that I was present at the meeting on the 14th June 1990, which the Plaintiffs now accept that I did not attend, means that his evidence cannot be given any weight at all - it is completely unreliable. If you look at the notes of that date, which appear on page 139 of the bundle of spies' notes, it could not be a simple mistake of adding my name to the list of people present by accident, because he states at the end of his report that 'meeting finished reasonably early, 9.30, because Paul and Helen were going for a drink with friends'.

When he wrote that report he knew that that was untrue but he did not care, he just put it down anyway. It was really quite fortunate that I actually spotted it by compiling a list of all the meetings that the spies had attended and noting that Mr Bishop [McDonald's spy] did not report that I had attended that meeting and that then reminded me that I was on holiday at that time."

Ms Steel added that the unreliable nature of Mr Clares evidence should be considered for all of his notes. She claimed that they could not be trusted.

Ms Steel finished with the evidence of the spies and concluded that there was absolutely no evidence from any of the spies that either herself or Mr Morris were encouraging distribution of the factsheet, or distributing it themselves.

Mr Morris took over for the remainder of the day. He made a number of general points and noted that McDonald's spies are not members of the public, they were attending meetings for the purpose of getting material for McDonald's. He submited that if they had received copies of the factsheet, it could not be considered as publication since they are agents of the Plaintiffs, not third parties.

He spoke about the nature of London Greenpeace, about how it was not just by chance that Plaintiffs could not prove their case because they could not demonstrate any structure. He said that it was a positive conscious feature of London Greenpeace meetings that there were no leaders, representatives, and people in positions of authority because the group had an anarchist culture.

Justice Bell asked whether Mr Morris agreed with Ms Steel's earlier description of anarchism. Mr Morris referred to a dictionary definition which he said read, "a harmonious system of society, in which government is unnecessary."

[The Court Adjourned]

Note:Due to the unavailability of the official court transcripts at this time, this report has not been checked for accuracy against the transcripts but was complied from extensive notes taken during the day by volunteers.

See also: The report for the previous day
and, for summaries of all the key evidence given during the trial;
Trial News 1, Trial News 2, and Trial News 3